Marie Curie

Great achievements come through persistence if not obsession. Commonly known as Madame Curie, Marie Curie is one of the most acclaimed women who dedicated their lives to science. Winning two Nobel Prizes, Marie Curie was a genius who came from the middle class and achieved tremendous things.

One would think that all geniuses, such as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawkins, Thomas Edison, are born all-knowingly, right? In some cases, they are. However, many of these people far beyond their time worked hard and were transfixed if not obsessed with reason and logic. Just imagine where would we be if there was no Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, or Alexander Gram Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Our world has made drastic changes and discoveries since their time and we will continue to evolve. Being one of these geniuses, Marie Curie greatly contributed to science and changed the way women scientists were viewed by society.

Marie Curie was from Poland and her family really influenced the way her future would play out. Before she was Marie Curie she was Marya “Manya” Salomee Sklodowska. Marie’s father was a scientist who worked out of their home in Poland but lost his power to work in 1863 when Russian influence outlawed professors from their practices. Marie’s family was not wealthy but they were still able to afford private schooling for their daughter. However, the financial crisis began and slow increase and, when Marie was around the age of four, her mother became ill. In 1871 Marie’s mother showed signs of tuberculosis. After Marie’s mother’s death, the young girl was told she was never to ask what happened to her mother.

By the age of four, despite her mother’s death, Marie was able to read flawlessly. Likewise, she was also able to memorize poems and write perfectly. All of the four children, three girls and one boy, in Marie’s family were gifted with brilliance. Talk about lucky. But things began to take a tragic turn for Marie's family when her two sisters became sick with typhus. Sadly, one of her sisters, Zosia, perished at only twelve years of age. The death of her mother and sister cast a sheet of sadness of the Sklodowska family. Despite the tragedies, the family prevailed. It wasn’t a happily ever after, but it was something. The remaining children were very successful in school and all but one graduated at top of their class. Marie was only fifteen when she graduated high school.

Curie, after the demise of her mother, gave up her faith and religion but still studied and learned like there was no tomorrow. Years later, at the age of 23, Marie traveled to Paris with nothing but a mattress, a stool, clothes, food and water. Here Marie continued her education and she enrolled herself in a class of around two thousand, which only had 23 female students. Marie really pushed herself. It is amazing to read these numbers and acknowledge how far women have come in the past one-hundred and fifty years. Regardless, Marie spent her nights often times studying late into the night. Marie was treated with a lot of respect by male students within the school itself but Paris as a whole, as well as Poland, didn’t offer women many rights that are now known as assumed rights. Barbara Goldsmith, author of Obsessive Genius the Inner World of Marie Curie, says that “the rare female scientist was depicted as masculine, coarse, ugly, careworn, and industrious but making no significant contribution.” This was the stereotype at the time but Curie proved many wrong and surprised the world.

Marie is probable most well known for her discovery of radium. Specifically, Marie discovered the radioactive property of radium and explained this through scientific journals. Marie was one of few women at the time that received a degree in science let alone two Nobel Prizes. Before this, in the 1890’s, Marie met her future husband Pierre Curie. They wed in 1895 and essentially became partners in crime. Not literally, of course, but in working to make their mark in this world. The Curies were very dedicated to their work and “bounced” ideas off of one another such as discoveries like the electrometer, the X-ray and the radioactive property of radium.

Like many people too smart for their own good or too ahead of their time, Marie Curie wasn’t acknowledged for her work immediately. The geniuses of our world are always the oddballs of society yet they are the ones who make the biggest impact on our lives. Marie was full of perseverance and never stopped learning. It was her life goal to make her mark in the world and not just have her memory disintegrate like she had never been there. Never did Marie give up or did she let her identity that didn’t fit into society dictate her life.

“For me I am very gay-for often I hide my deep lack of gaiety under laughter. This is something that I learned to do when I found out that creatures who feel as keenly as I do and are unable to change this characteristic of their nature have to dissimulate it at least as much as possible….There were some very hard days and the only thing that softens the memory of them is that in spite of everything I came through it all honestly with my head high.”
Word Count: 898

Work Cited:Obsessive Genius the Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith.